Preparing for War

If you haven't heard of Nike's Pro-Combat line of college football uniforms, you've probably seen them. Pro-Combat uniforms, according to Nike, represent the cutting edge of football uniform innovation and design. The two years ago, when Nike released their first line of Pro-Combat uniforms, several of them were more or less fauxbacks, throwbacks–with a few modern alterations. However in their second year, the uniform designs were even more unconventional, some almost resembling Major League Baseball's "Turn Ahead The Clock" event from 1999. The rising popularity of the innovative and sometimes outlandish Pro-Combat uniform series has led to many creating their own mock 'Pro-Combat style' uniform for their favorite team or school.

In my latest entry, we examined some ads from the Adidas Football facebook page. After perusing the Photos section which contained a lot of user-submitted material, I came across something interesting. Someone had done some mockups of a Pro-Combat uniform for Michigan, which raised an eyebrow for a few reasons.

For one, the Pro-Combat concept is a Nike thing, I'm not trying to say fans of Adidas schools aren't allowed to make a mockup, but it's intriguing that Adidas would allow that sort of thing on their page. Additionally, the mockup itself uses a Nike design template, and the creator of the mockup neglected to alter or remove the Swoosh from the player's cleats, making this all the more obvious. I know it's not in any official advertising or anything, but it's curious to see that this sort of thing made it onto Adidas' facebook page, despite bearing the obvious mark of the enemy.

Adidas has acknowledged the popularity of Nike's unconventional uniforms and has slated this season's game between Notre Dame and Michigan as a 'throwback' game in which both teams–which are Adidas schools–will wear special throwback uniforms. I'll be curious to see if these will be true throwback uniforms; will they be accurate to the respective era they represent? More importantly, will Adidas' offering be as popular as Pro-Combat without the modern stylings that have made them popular? It's a distinctly different approach; Nike has put a lot of their stock into programs known for bucking tradition. Adidas, however, has its placed resources behind two programs laden with history. It's "Old vs. New," "Tradition versus Innovation." However you want to put it. Just leave the war analogies at home.